The love of my life? Ketchup!
Maybe it's a very special passion, but I think that with me and the food, that's really great! There are some foods that are true friends. I mean BFF friends, without whom one can hardly live.
Muesli against lovesickness
It all started when I had a broken heart for the first time. It was very late, so I was lucky. But it hit me all the harder, because I first had to get to know this damned lovesick monster and it looked somehow harmless from the outside. "Is there anything that would help you now?" My best friend asked worriedly. I nodded sobbing. Previously, against every grief, this one cereal had helped. Also against fatigue, bad mood and the harsh reality in and of itself. Oh, cereal is the wrong word, this stuff was a revelation! Delicate oat flakes mixed with melting fruit flakes that tasted of summer and orange. That along with milk? it was not better. Exactly this cereal I needed. Then I would feel better, I knew that. I did not remember what it was called, nor did my mother. We only knew that it was from Knorr. So we called the Knorr customer hotline, described the miracle cereal, were passed from Hinz to Kunz and explained again and again what we wanted. No, needed! Until we got to a nice old lady who knew it. "No, baby, that does not exist anymore, it was taken out of the assortment ten years ago." Her words were almost worse than the heartache. Never again should I be allowed to taste the oat milk summer? It was a disaster.
And then also the ketchup
It was even worse to look helpless in the face of the looming loss! First, there were only small indications. Our supermarket around the corner did not have my favorite ketchup anymore. "Try another variety," I was told by the information. These people at supermarket information sometimes have no real idea. I went strange and ran 300 meters to the shop. They did not have my ketchup but soon. "Has been set," said the information man. Hotly I was overcome with the desire for this hot ketchup and I would like to have been three again to throw myself with drumming fists on the floor. I hurried home and called Heinz. With customer hotlines I had now experience. "He really does not exist anymore," said the nice lady on the phone. "But we're bringing out a new strain that has a very similar recipe." How dare she? Similar? Similar was not enough. I bought the last ten bottles at Real and enjoyed my last few months with my favorite hot and very hot ketchup. When he was empty, I wrote Heinz again. I promised to buy a bottle every week if they thought twice. A final act of desperation. They wrote me to try the new variety. I did it only after a few months, because it felt like high treason. And I have to admit, he tasted the same way. It was as if I had found a lost friend again. Or at least his twin brother.
Grandma does not have a customer hotline, right?
Last year I did not continue with customer hotlines. My grandma just told us that she would not do the turkey at Christmas any more. Worse, she let it go, as if it was nothing else. For others, Christmas may taste like biscuits, marzipan or gingerbread? Christmas tastes like grandma's turkey for us. For days, she cooked them out, put them back down, scooped off the fat, and made of this fat and plenty of alcoholic drinks a sauce that could easily earn a Michelin star. She just never put it on it. My siblings and I protested. 82 was no age. But my grandma stayed tough. Her only offer: If we had days left before Christmas, then we would like to learn from her. Give instructions, they could do with 100. I will never forget my big brother that he has learned it. Christmas presents we will not get any more from him now. "No time," says my brother. "I have to roast turkey." But in the end, the stupid turkey is the biggest gift he can give us. Even my grandma makes it happy with it. "The turkey tastes much better if it does not make you work," she says. "It tastes like it used to." And that's what sometimes only food is about. Well? Bad? No matter! Main thing as before!
